Michael Sars (30 August 1805 – 22 October 1869) was a
Norwegian theologian and
biologist
A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual cell, a multicellular organism, or a community of interacting populations. They usually speciali ...
.
Biography
Sars was born in
Bergen, Norway.
He studied natural history and theology at
Royal Frederick University from 1823 and completed a
cand.theol. degree
Degree may refer to:
As a unit of measurement
* Degree (angle), a unit of angle measurement
** Degree of geographical latitude
** Degree of geographical longitude
* Degree symbol (°), a notation used in science, engineering, and mathemati ...
in 1828.
For several years he taught at a number of different schools, firstly in Christiania (now
Oslo
Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...
) and then in Bergen. In 1831 he was appointed
vicar to
Kinn Church on the Norwegian north-west coast;
eight years later he transferred to
Manger, just north of Bergen.
Finally, in 1854 he was named professor of
zoology
Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and ...
at the University of Oslo (at that time Christiania)
where he remained for the rest of his life. He died in 1869. He was married to
Maren Welhaven, sister of the epic poet
Johann Sebastian Welhaven
Johan Sebastian Cammermeyer Welhaven (22 December 1807 – 21 October 1873) was a Norwegian author, poet, critic, and art theorist. He has been considered "one of the greatest figures in Norwegian literature."
Background
Johan Welhaven was born ...
in 1831, and had 7 daughters and 7 sons.
Work
Sars issued his first publication in 1829 – ' ("Contributions to the Natural History of Marine Animals"); a second followed in 1835 – ' ("Descriptions and Observations of some strange or new animals found off the coast of Bergen, belonging to the ...").
He also issued two large-scale volumes under the title '. In all these publications, Sars
described new taxa, a routine activity of scientists of the period, but he also described life-histories and reproductive cycles, food and feeding, behaviour and geographical dispersal. The British zoologist
Edward Forbes had issued a series of articles on biogeography, claiming that no animal life existed at depths greater than . Sars and his colleagues wrote a series of reports issued in various Norwegian journals, where they documented the presence of a number of taxa in Norwegian
fjords at depths of up to .
As a result of one of his
dredging
Dredging is the excavation of material from a water environment. Possible reasons for dredging include improving existing water features; reshaping land and water features to alter drainage, navigability, and commercial use; constructing d ...
expeditions, Sars described the first living stalked
crinoid to be described,
''Rhizocrinus lofotensis''.
This find spurred academic interest in the deep sea and prompted the
''Challenger'' expedition and other similar ventures around the globe. He was also the first to describe the
sessile stage of
Scyphozoa (
jellyfish
Jellyfish and sea jellies are the informal common names given to the medusa-phase of certain gelatinous members of the subphylum Medusozoa, a major part of the phylum Cnidaria. Jellyfish are mainly free-swimming marine animals with umbrella- ...
), and to document the development of
molluscs from free-swimming
larva
A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle.
Th ...
e.
Michael Sars was one of the last great
descriptive zoologists who catalogued organisms more or less equally successfully in all major animal groups. Sars also described
fossil
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...
s from various
fossil beds in Norway and appears to have been keenly interested in all sorts of other issues. Sars was asked by the
Parliament of Norway
The Storting ( no, Stortinget ) (lit. the Great Thing) is the supreme legislature of Norway, established in 1814 by the Constitution of Norway. It is located in Oslo. The unicameral parliament has 169 members and is elected every four years bas ...
to investigate the
biology
Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditar ...
of Norwegian
fisheries, such as the
herring
Herring are forage fish, mostly belonging to the family of Clupeidae.
Herring often move in large schools around fishing banks and near the coast, found particularly in shallow, temperate waters of the North Pacific and North Atlantic Ocea ...
and
cod fisheries. He had started these investigations by the time of his death, but most of them were completed and published posthumously by his son,
Georg Ossian Sars.
He was elected a member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1855.
Taxa
The
World Register of Marine Species
The World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) is a taxonomic database that aims to provide an authoritative and comprehensive list of names of marine organisms.
Content
The content of the registry is edited and maintained by scientific speciali ...
(WoRMS) lists 260 marine species named by Michael Sars.
WoRMS: Species named by Michael Sars.
/ref>
See also
* The ship M/S Michael Sars
References
External links
Some biographical information
and a partial list of species he described
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sars, Michael
1805 births
1869 deaths
People educated at the Bergen Cathedral School
Norwegian carcinologists
Norwegian marine biologists
19th-century Norwegian zoologists
19th-century Norwegian Lutheran clergy
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Scientists from Bergen
University of Oslo alumni
University of Oslo faculty
Clergy from Bergen